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Topic: A Lot of Preppers Are Going to Die When the Lights Go Out? (Read 7971 times)

Bill, you misunderstand me. I don't underestimate the damage that could occur during a major event, what I disagree with you about is our ability to recover from such an event or the all encompassing nature of such an event.

I think if you look at the records from the last Carrington Event, you will note it WASN'T so all encompassing, as to affect the entire planet in the same way. Sure, the western part of North America was hit the worst, but what about the rest of the planet? Where are the records of what happened in Europe or China? Or even the East Coast of North America or even Central America?You can't tell me of anything more serious than flashing lights in the skies over regions that had just as much technology as the US had. The biggest hallmark that I see about the Carrington Event, is that it was limited to an area, a huge area, but still limited to an area.

And if an enemy were to use enough energetic devices as to saturate the planet, we'd have a lot more problems to deal with rather than merely losing our electronics,

There is no geological evidence of such an event taking place over the planet, at the same time. All there are, are Possible shifts in the magnetic field, and if anything ever took place at the planetary level as you postulate, believe me, we'd have some evidence of that. I believe massive events have taken place in the past, just not over the entire planet, at the same time.

You should be glad, it makes the probability of another strike from the Sun, very unlikely, in the Western US. Yes, it was a huge area, that was hit, but not even all the Western parts of North America were hit with the same amount of power, and that's why the evidence of what happened during the Carrington Event, is primarily historical rather than physical.

So yes, I believe that such an Event will take place again, but I also believe you are over-generalizing, to make it such a planet encompassing event. Yes, it will hit somewhere on the planet with devastating power, just not everywhere on the planet, at the same time. For the Earth to be hit with as much energy as you are postulating, it would have to from a SuperFlare, and while there are observations to indicate such are possible on other sun-like stars, we haven't seen anything even close to such a phenomenon on our sun or any remnants on the other planetary bodies of our system.

It is my belief that enough other parts of the Earth would survive either a man-made or natural event, that we COULD recover and rebuild. But we can't afford to twiddle our thumbs, in the hope we won't be the target, by either man or nature, we must prepare for such a possibility, it's just the scale that you postulate, that I disagree with. For if we were to be hit with the amount of energy that would be necessary to saturate our planet, we would have some rather severe biological effects to worry about, not just technological, and I'm not sure if the human race could survive that, even from deep shelter.

For those who are interested in educating themselves on EMP and various solar EM phenomena, the best site on the web right now is the futurescience EMP page here:http://www.futurescience.com/emp.htmlIf you have any genuine interest in the subject, start with this link, keep on reading, and draw your own conclusions.

Bill,

That's a really handy site. The Myths section is very useful, except for the part where he is exactly wrong about the sensitivity of new solid state components.

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One source for the belief is the testing of small transistorized radios that was done during the 1970s. That testing cannot be extrapolated to today's solid-state receivers, which usually use integrated circuits that are much more sensitive to EMP than the receivers of the 1970s that used much more rugged discrete transistors.

As somebody who has worked with electronics professionally for twenty-five years on equipment from the 1960's through today I swear that solid state equipment has gotten more resistant to shock, not less. This is not a process of steely-eyed missile men working to harden our nation against attack. This is a process of the folks at Returned Merchandise at Amazon and Newegg complaining about failed components and having the power to impose purchasing decisions based on equipment survival in the field.

I admit that in an EMP event it is likely that all kinds of weird things are going to go wrong and that just like in any other battle, plans are going to meet the shredder called reality. My proof that our consumer electronics are tougher is that fifteen year old twits routinely make their own gaming computers from components and that Newegg makes a fortune off them.

Seriously, the evidence is everywhere in the form of massive numbers of personal electronic appliances in the hands of some of the stupidest and least careful members of our society. We are not hearing about cell phones, tablets, and toys suddenly stopping function on days with high static electricity, near large electric motors, or other field events.

Finally, it defies reason to expect that if EMP was a readily achievable event it would not have been used on the small scale by low-grade terrorists like the Occupy movement. (Or should that be the Occupy standstill?) When I was in Iraq, power losses were frequent but that happened because Turkey was shutting off the power they were selling to Kurdistan or Arabs were trashing the lines somewhere south. I find it very hard to believe that Iran would let an opportunity to test conventional EMP devices go to waste with wars on their doorstep if they were working on such weapons. Without the small scale exploitations, it is difficult for me to believe in the comprehensive efficacy of the large scale devices. This is not a question of physics, this is a matter of human nature. Nobody resists the temptation to use an effective weapon that long.

Effective mass EMP involves the use of high altitude nuclear explosions, not something available to the average terrorist.As for non-nuclear EMP, it's real, too:http://www.wnd.com/2012/10/it-works-computers-fried-by-emp-like-blast/Most terrorists don't have cruise missiles, however.You don't seem to have any real notion as to what you are talking about when it comes to EMP, Psi, and until you do, I'm not going to bother debating this with you any more. It's a waste of my time.

I've got decades of experience with real electronics tested in military and commercial laboratories. I just disagree with you with regard to the scope of their effects and the extent of the aftermath.

I do grant that many of the urban regions of the US are susceptible to the slightest nudge as a source of catastrophe. Arguably Ray Nagin and bad Army Corps of Engineers policy did more damage to New Orleans than Katrina.

EMP/Solar events are definitely a possibility but what about other events such as a massive pandemic? Remember 1918? http://virus.stanford.edu/uda/ 28 percent of the U.S population was infected. Think what would happen to our high tech infrastructure if the enough of the highly skilled technicians fell to a plague? I went by plane from Detroit Michigan to Dallas/ Fort worth Texas. at both airports there were folks from all over the world. How long does/would it take a plague to spread at the rate people travel internationally today? What would be the effects? a plague can be as devastating if not more so than a EMP event. Just some thoughts that I admit are dark especially for me.

Well, one difference is that we've never known of a plague that is 100% fatal, so there would likely be survivors. And absent EMP, there would still be an electronic infrastructure they could attempt to make use of.